Caterpillar Dogs

February 20, 2023
Williams, the Pulitzer-winning playwright and author of the collection Hard Candy, shows glimmers of his mature style in these modest sketches. Each story begins as a character portrait that may or may not develop into a plot. In “Every Friday Nite Is Kiddies Nite” the newly retired Reverend Houston finds his new idle existence idyllic and free of guilt. The title story is a snapshot of an elderly spinster’s violent final day. “Season of Grapes,” by contrast, tracks a sensuous summer affair and all its attendant turbulence. Its narrator, on the verge of college, wants simultaneously to be free from and comforted by the presence of the community he’s leaving behind. Other entries depict the enthusiasm of first love, a young woman branded by the wagging tongues of a provincial community, and a backwoods love triangle. The closer, “Stair to the Roof,” is both the most autobiographical and the most accomplished: Edward Schiller feels trapped in his dull job at the Continental Shoe Company and dreams of escape while his mother tells everyone he’s a “terrible disappointment.” They might be Tom and Amanda Wingfield from Williams’s breakout play, The Glass Menagerie. This is a fine addition to Williams’s broad oeuvre.

June 2, 2023

While forced to work under his father at a shoe factory, Tom Williams--soon to be known as the prolific playwright and author Tennessee Williams--wrote poems on the lids of shoe boxes and plays for a theater company in St. Louis. He also wrote short stories. Character studies, really, seven of which make up this most recent offering. In the title story, the author hilariously recounts what would unfortunately become an older woman's final act of trying to rid her home of the housekeeper's pesky "caterpillar dogs." Another recounts the bitter loneliness of a young man who is abandoned after a brief romance at a summer camp. As the collection unfolds, the stories tend to increase in length, giving the author more and more space to explore his subjects. Williams plays with dialect, sometimes writing lines that can require a second glance, as when he creates words such as toleja and phrases like jes' naow. These stories are never too difficult to follow, however, and don't always provide much by way of plot, but that seems to be by the author's design. The collection, in whole or in part, is no less pleasant to consume. VERDICT A pithy, easy-to-read collection, with an excellent introduction, especially for devotees of the author.--Joel D. Shoemaker

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